Military Embedded Systems

Kontron sees slower business in 2012

Other

February 28, 2012

John McHale

Editorial Director

Military Embedded Systems

Executives at Kontron announced at an Embedded World press conference in Nuremberg, Germany that they expect to shrink slightly in 2012 due to government budget cuts across the globe and the current European economic crisis. However, they feel that their diversification across multiple markets -- military, industrial, medical, etc. -- should keep losses at a minimum.

In the mean time, Dirk Finstel, Kontron's chief technical officer said the company is looking to grow its research and development investment in 2012. Today they announced a new form factor called the ULP or Ultra-Low Power module that is based on the ARM standard. Finstel said the first products based on the new module will support NVIDIA Tegra 3 and TI Sitara AM3874 MPU.

In other product news the company's Machine-to-Machine (M2M) device, the KM2M806XT is now rated for extreme temperatures of -40 to 85 degrees Celsius, making it more applicable for military and rugged industrial applications, said Norbert Hauser, executive vice president at Kontron.

Finstel also mentioned that Kontron is supporting a new standards consortium called the Standardization Group for Embedded Technologies or SGET, to speed up the standardization process. He said Kontron's customers were tired of hearing that it takes three to four years to develop a standard through PICMG.

We'll have more on this later in the week.